“I Am Making the World My Confessor”: Mary MacLane, the Wild Woman from Butte

By Hunter Dukes

In 1902, a woman named Mary MacLane from Butte, Montana, became an international sensation after publishing a scandalous journal recording life at the age of 19. Rereading this often-forgotten debut, Hunter Dukes finds a voice that hungers for worldly experience, brims with bisexual longing, and rages against the injustices of youth. more

“You Think Me a Bold Cheat”: Mary Carleton, Counterfeit Princess

By Laura Kolb

Accused of posing as foreign royalty to lure her young suitor into a bigamous marriage, Mary Carleton was the subject of dozens of pamphlets and broadsides published in the mid-17th century, including by Carleton herself. Investigating the fraudster’s life, Laura Kolb finds a self-fashioning figure who both influenced the emergence of the English novel and serves as a strange precursor to our modern-day fascination with conwomen and counterfeits, like the heiress manqué Anna Delvey. more